Posts Tagged: philanthropy - (20 found)

Over the course of two years and hundreds of interviews with foundations, advocates, evaluators, and other experts, a consistent theme emerged around the need for foundations to be more aggressive and adaptive in their support for advocacy and policy change. This theme runs through more than 20 different reports, publications, and other resources. In each case, what arises from all this research is a clear sense that grantmakers should better understand their roles in the broader advocacy ecosystem, and foundations that do engage in supporting advocacy should consider a wider range of bolder and more effective approaches.

Recent findings (from 2016) about how nonprofits engage in evaluation, and the capacities and characteristics of their organizations. “Funding for evaluation is also moving in the right direction, with more nonprofits receiving funding for evaluation from at least one source than in the past”… but… “In most organizations, pivotal resources of money and staff time for evaluation are severely limited or nonexistent.”

TCC Group has been examining how advocacy organizations use legal advocacy as a strategy and how funders can best support that work. Here, they share the results of their work to help inform funders, legal advocates, non-legal advocates, and evaluators about the field of legal advocacy.

Julia Coffman (Director and founder of the Center for Evaluation Innovation) writes: “I’ve been an evaluator for 25 years now, and I love it. I love the opportunity to apply research skills to important questions. I love helping people to think about their hypotheses and assumptions and then testing them. I love informing strategic decisions at critical times…”

Evaluation Capacity Building (ECB) is the process of improving an organization’s ability to use evaluation to learn from its work and improve results. Organizational learning is incredibly important. Organizations that are adept at learning from mistakes and adapting to new challenges are more likely to be successful, and in the nonprofit sector, more likely to make significant progress toward mission-related outcomes.

This searing 2012 report says the environmental movement is not winning and lays the blame squarely on the failed policies of environmental funders. The movement hasn’t won any “significant policy changes at the federal level in the United States since the 1980s” because funders have favored top-down elite strategies and have neglected to support a robust grassroots infrastructure. Environmental funders spent a whopping $10 billion between 2000 and 2009 but achieved relatively little because they failed to underwrite grassroots groups that are essential for any large-scale change, the report says…

Advocacy evaluation is a craft, one in which tacit knowledge, skill and networks are more useful than the application of a rigid methodology. It is an exercise in trained judgment. The evaluator, rather than the formal qualities of the evaluation, is what matters.

This new framework provides a methodical and organised approach to managing some of philanthropy’s most complicated endeavours. The framework evaluates projects for nine conditions, from the presence of effective champions to favourable timing. It complements and enhances expert judgment when funders are comparing and choosing investments… A bit of structure can go a long way toward overcoming biases and fairly evaluating an advocacy campaign’s chances of success.

Jeffrey Bradach and Abe Grindle describe nine strategies to deliver impact at a scale that truly meets needs… nine approaches that hold real promise for addressing at a transformative scale a number of major social problems:

1. Distribute through existing platforms
2. Recruit (and train) others to deliver the solution
3. Unbundle and scale up the parts that have the greatest impact
4. Use technology to reach a larger audience
5. Don’t just build organizations and programs, strengthen a field
6. Change public systems
7. Embrace the need for policy change
8. Don’t ignore for-profit models for scale
9. Alter people’s attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors

More and more grant makers are looking at evaluation in a new light. They are redefining its role in philanthropy in five ways: It’s about improvement, not just proof; It’s about contribution, not attribution; It’s about learning with others, not alone; It’s about going beyond the individual grant; It’s about embracing failure…

Testimonials

Cesar Chavez

Nonviolence is not inaction. It is not discussion. It is not for the timid or the weak... Nonviolence is hard work. It is the willingness to sacrifice. It is the patience to win.

2014-03-30T08:37:27+00:00

Nonviolence is not inaction. It is not discussion. It is not for the timid or the weak… Nonviolence is hard work. It is the willingness to sacrifice. It is the patience to win.

http://www.thechangeagency.org/testimonials/cesar-chavez/

Paulo Freire

No-one educates anyone else; no-one educates himself alone. Persons are educated in communion with one another; in the midst of the world's influences.

2014-03-30T08:31:31+00:00

No-one educates anyone else; no-one educates himself alone. Persons are educated in communion with one another; in the midst of the world’s influences.

http://www.thechangeagency.org/testimonials/paulo-freire/

Noam Chomsky

If you go to one demonstration and then go home, that's something. But the people in power can live with that. What they can't live with is sustained pressure that keeps building, organisations that keep doing things, people that keep learning lessons from last time and doing it better the next time.

2014-03-30T08:36:31+00:00

If you go to one demonstration and then go home, that’s something. But the people in power can live with that. What they can’t live with is sustained pressure that keeps building, organisations that keep doing things, people that keep learning lessons from last time and doing it better the next time.

http://www.thechangeagency.org/testimonials/noam-chomsky/

Miles Horton, Highlander Centre

We have found that a very effective way to help students to understand the present social order is to throw them into conflict situations where the real nature of our society is projected in all its ugliness.

2014-03-30T08:24:40+00:00

We have found that a very effective way to help students to understand the present social order is to throw them into conflict situations where the real nature of our society is projected in all its ugliness.

Reverend Robert Linthicum, World Vision International

Community organising is that process by which the people organise themselves to take charge of their situation and develop a sense of being a community together. It is a particularly effective tool for the poor and the powerless as they determine for themselves the actions they will take to deal with the essential forces that are destroying their community and consequently causing them to be powerless.

2014-03-30T08:21:08+00:00

Community organising is that process by which the people organise themselves to take charge of their situation and develop a sense of being a community together. It is a particularly effective tool for the poor and the powerless as they determine for themselves the actions they will take to deal with the essential forces that...

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